


Blue Lights

by kazhan



Series: MIKROKOSMOS [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, CC-2224 | Cody Needs a Hug, Can be read as gen, Clone Centric, First Meetings, Gen, M/M, Minor Character Death, Pre-Relationship, cody centric, pre-Codywan - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25313686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kazhan/pseuds/kazhan
Summary: “Hang in there soldier, don’t give up,” his General tells him the first time they meet.Good soldiers follow orders, so of course, Cody obeys.
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody & Obi-Wan Kenobi
Series: MIKROKOSMOS [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1833538
Comments: 21
Kudos: 178





	Blue Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there!  
> Sooo, Clone Wars season 7 came out and I'm obsessed again.  
> This is my take on Cody and Obi-Wan's first meeting. It's also the first part of a much bigger series that'll feature some Codywan, but you can definitely read this as completely platonic.

The world is red. His ears are ringing and the smell of smoke and burning flesh fills his nose, making him gag. For a second, he thinks the filters of his helmet aren’t working anymore, but then he slowly realizes that his face is bare. That would explain the scorching heat licking at his face, making it hard to breathe. Disoriented, he takes a while to realize he is laying on the ground. Cody takes a deep, shuddering breath and pushes on his arms to kneel up. Immediately, he feels someone grab his shoulders and cold dread fills his veins as he tries to defend himself with a snarl, but strong hands take a hold of his face and Cody stills when he feels fingers carefully wiping his eyes. Cody holds his breath and blinks as his vision slowly clears. He is met with white plastoid and his heart misses a beat. White armor. _Vod_. His hands grip the other clone’s arms and he tries to focus on the familiar helmet but the dizziness fogging his mind makes it difficult.

The soldier takes off his _buy’ce_ , revealing a concerned frown and Cody realizes the man is talking to him, but he can’t hear anything besides the buzzing in his ears. The other clone seems to realize this and looks around before helping him on his feet. The Commander stands up with a groan, his body aching painfully as the soldier puts his arm around his shoulders. Cody grits his teeth. Some part of him wants to push him away, tell him he can walk on his own, but he can only lean against him, struggling to stand and definitely not able to keep himself from falling without his help.

Something warm is dripping alongside his face and into his left eye, forcing him to close it. Blood, he figures. His other eye wanders, taking in the fire surrounding him, the bodies laying around, arms and legs bent in unnatural angles. The fire keeps spreading, destroying everything around them, eating at the white plastoid of the dead clones’ armor and turning it black before attacking the flesh underneath. Cody has to swallow back the urge to vomit. 

Slowly, the buzzing in his ears starts to fade and Cody instantly regrets not being able to hear anything, because now, the distant screams of injured brothers fill his ears. 

Something catches his eye and Cody feels his heart miss a beat when he recognizes his General laying on the ground, or at least what’s left of him. He remembers then, the whistling of a mortar shell coming straight towards them, how he had tried to grab General Alten to lead him to safety. He remembers the explosion, the heat, and how everything had turned black. 

He failed. His very first battle, and he let the his General die.

_You were bred and trained for them. You will obey them and die for them if you have to,_ the trainers on Kamino had told him and his brothers, again and again.

 _I’m a failure,_ Cody thinks as the other clone keeps dragging him away from the fire. The battle is obviously lost. He has no idea how many of his brothers died already, but he just has to look around him to know that the Separatists are going to win this fight. If he actually makes it out alive, the _Kaminiise_ will deem him unfit to lead men into battle and decommission him, Cody is sure of it. 

He’s already dead and yet, his brother whose name he doesn’t even know keeps dragging him away from the fight. Does he even have a name? Probably not. Cody opens his mouth to tell him to let him go, but before he can say anything, a sharp, burning pain bites his right flank, making him cry in pain and tumble forward. The other clone doesn’t catch his fall. 

He doesn’t prevent him from falling because he goes completely limp against him and falls face first onto the ground.

Cody hisses, tries to catch himself, but he ends up on his knees, his right flank _burning_ every time he tries to take a breath. His head is spinning and he just lets himself fall on his left side, next to the other soldier. His vision goes a bit dark around the edge, but Cody struggles to stay awake and with a grunt, cranes his neck to look at the fallen trooper. There is a scorch mark on his back, where a blaster bolt went right through his chest, killing him almost instantly. Cody grits his teeth and looks away to see the droid army advancing towards him.

He can hear it then, the sound of the battle raging around him, the blasters firing from both sides as he’s laying there, unable to move. 

He’s going to die here.

Cody’s oldest memories are of small bodies swimming in blue tubes, of being suddenly cold and terrified and wanting to go back to feeling warm and safe. They’re of blinding lights, screams and explosions. He was barely two years old the first time he stood in a battlefield. It might only have been Flash training, but it had felt real enough for him to wake up in the middle of the night, scared and whimpering because he had just dreamed of hiding in a hole in the ground while the world around him was on fire. 

Cody has known the fear of dying since he was two, but he also learned to let it go, to not let it freeze him and keep him from doing his duty. 

Every clone know they are meant to die young. 

If they didn’t die on the battlefield, decommissioned after sustaining a bad injury or for being too different, the rapid aging would take care of it. 

Like all his brothers, Cody knows how expendable he is. Being a CC has made him slightly more important than the others, but deep down, the Commander has always known that in the grand scheme of things, he is nothing more than a tiny cog in a giant machine. If he stops working, then he’ll just be removed, destroyed and replaced. 

Cody _knows_ all this. But there’s a huge difference between knowing something and actually experiencing it. Now that he’s actually facing death, he is ashamed to realize that he is _terrified._

He doesn’t feel at peace, he’s nowhere near feeling like he did good by giving his life to protect the Republic like he was bred to do. He just feels like a giant waste. Years of training as a Clone Commander, and that’s how he ends up. 

His vision is going dark again and he can barely breathe, each intake of breath making his whole chest throb with pain. Is this how Kad’la had felt, minutes before dying on Geonosis? Cody doesn’t even know how his brother, his _ori’vod,_ died. It’s not that they wouldn’t tell him, Cody actually verified the information himself, pulling his _vod_ ’s file to see the words _Killed In Action_ written in bright letters under his designation. That was it. Just three words, nothing more, leaving Cody to wonder what happened to him. 

Had his ship been blown out of the sky, killing him instantly and leaving no body behind to be found? Had he been shot and left to die on the ground, forgotten until some kind of Geonosis scavenger feasted on his dead body? 

Had it been fast, or slow and painful? Had Kad felt like him, then? Like a failure, a _waste_? 

The droids are almost on him now and Cody is about to close his eyes when something falls from the sky and lands right in front of him. 

No, not something. 

_Someone._

Cody holds his breath, his good eye widening as he takes in the beige tabard and leggings, the brown leather boots and more importantly, the blue light of a _Jetii’kad._

The droids immediately start firing, but the Jedi reflects each blow and Cody can only watch as the man jumps towards the clankers and starts cutting them in half. He’s seen holos of Jedi fighting before. Learning how to protect their Generals on the field without becoming a liability to them was part of their training. But those holos were short and of bad quality - after all, Jedi didn’t usually get filmed while fighting before the war - and Cody has to admit he hasn’t learned _much_ from those. 

The Jedi is moving like gravity has no impact on him. He’s jumping and crouching to avoid blaster bolts, his blue lightsaber cutting through the lines of the droids easily. Cody wants to wipe his forehead again, to remove the blood from his left eye to be able to see more clearly, but he can’t move, only stare at the man moving like he’s made of water. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he notices the rest of his men finally moving forward. With the Jedi’s help, they aren’t pinned down behind the half crumbled walls of the base anymore and they’re now moving fast, following the General with a confidence he hasn’t seen in them since the attack began. 

Cody is tired. He’s cold, like he had been the day the Kaminoans had decanted him, pulling him out of the warm safety of his growth jar to be handled by droids who had dried him and put some clothes on him. He’s struggling to breathe and stay awake and yet, he can’t stop watching the Jedi piercing through the enemy lines. 

They say a Jedi is worth hundreds of clones. Cody perfectly remembers the lessons he was taught - after all, Cody remembers _a lot_ , he was engineered that way - about the mystical warriors who used what they called the Force to move objects with a mere thought or control people’s mind. He grew up worshiping them, dreaming of the day he would be sent out on the battlefield to fight alongside those formidable fighters he and his brothers had been bred to protect. 

And then the Jedi had finally come to retrieve their army. Cody had been sent to Coruscant, while Kad’la, Davijaan and thousands of his brothers were sent to Geonosis for their first battle. 

Cody had realized what _war_ truly meant when Kad’la hadn’t come back. When he had stared at the number of MIA and KIA brothers during the battle, unable to process how it truly made him feel. And yet, he had refused to lose the faith he had in the Jedi. 

Even when the rumors started spreading through the ranks of the clones after Geonosis, about how the Jedi were indeed formidable warriors, but awful at leading men in battle. Cody had refused to listen, because talking like this about the Jedi felt like treason. Sure, some of them probably weren’t great strategists, after all the clones themselves weren’t all the best at coming up with battle plans and they had been bred for war. But Cody couldn’t believe the Jedi would ever fail them. 

Because what did it mean for the clones, if their commanding officers weren’t capable of leading them through this war? 

Cody had stubbornly refused to imagine such a possibility. Cody had been _naive_. 

He had hoped that General Alten would be at least somewhat competent, but he had quickly realized that the man was just as confused and hopeless as most of his peers. They had been tasked with stopping the Separatists’ advance by protecting an old military base on Arantara but they had quickly realized that their intel was wrong. The Separatists had a lot more droids than planned, and a dozen of tanks were actually approaching their location. Cody knew they didn’t have enough men to fight them off, so he had suggested they planted explosives inside the base, let the droids advance and ambush them once they were inside. 

Alten had insisted they were supposed to _hold this position_ , so he had completely dismissed Cody’s plan and ordered the men to defend the base at all costs. The Jedi might have been a great warrior, but he had just led hundreds of Cody’s brothers to their death. The Commander didn’t even get to see much of his skills, considering a mortar blew him to pieces only a few minutes ago. 

Cody isn’t naive anymore. Too bad it’s too late, right? 

Alten is dead, just like countless of Cody’s brothers and Cody himself, soon, he’s pretty sure of it. 

What a waste. 

What a _karkin’_ waste. 

But as he’s watching the other Jedi cutting through the enemy lines, Cody can’t help but hope. Clones don’t have gods to pray to and yet, he’s praying to anyone, _anything_ , to let this Jedi be better than Alten. Or at least, to be smart enough to know when he’s out of his depths and should ask for help. 

Cody is exhausted. But he has always been a stubborn man, so he keeps his good eye open, he keeps watching until they’re so far away he can’t see anything but piles of bodies and droid parts. 

He can hear the distant pleas of brothers calling for a medic. Cody should probably do the same, but he can’t help but think that it would be a waste of medical supply. He has no idea how badly injured he is and maybe he will fully recover, but he has lost so many men. His plan wasn’t at fault, after all, it had been completely ignored by General Alten. But the Jedi is dead and it’s not like the Kaminoans and nat-born officers of the GAR are going to blame a _Jetii_ when they can just put everything on Cody, right? The medics should focus on the men who can be saved. 

So Cody keeps his mouth shut. He doesn’t think he has the strength to call for help, anyway. He’s ready to let the darkness claim him and closes his eyes, comforted by the thought that maybe, just _maybe,_ everything isn’t entirely lost for his brothers. 

Cody feels like he has closed his eyes for only a second when he’s suddenly brought back to consciousness by a warm palm pressed against his cheek. 

“-- mander? Can you hear me, Commander?” The voice doesn’t belong to one of his brothers and the accent is different. _Coruscantii_ , his mind provides faintly. 

Cody struggles to open his eyes, only manages the right one, as his other eye is probably shut by the drying blood still covering it. The first thing he sees is a blue light and at first he thinks it’s the Jedi’s lightsaber but as his vision adjusts, Cody realizes he’s actually staring at two bright blue eyes. Then he notices the copper hair and beard, the worried frown marking the Jedi’s forehead and he can’t help but wonder why he’s looking at him like that. 

The hand against his cheek is warm, so _warm_. 

“S-sir?” he croaks out, his voice barely audible. But the Jedi seems to hear him anyway and he smiles at him, something small and sad that makes Cody’s heart stutter inside his chest. 

“Hang in there soldier, don’t give up,” the Jedi says and his voice is soft, but he manages to make it sound like an order and the part of his brain that has been programmed to always obey the Jedi no matter what latches onto the words. 

_Yessir,_ he wants to say, but no sound actually makes it out of his parted lips. 

The warmth of the Jedi’s hand spreads across his whole body and the world fades to black. 

When Cody opens his eyes again, he has to muffle a groan at the bright light assaulting his senses. He needs a moment to adjust and finally notices the grey, naked walls surrounding him. Cody frowns. He’s on a bed, dressed in a white, soft shirt he’s never seen before. The smell of bacta is strong enough to make him nauseous and Cody scrunches up his nose. He sits up with a groan, his muscles stiff from staying in bed for-- well, how long has it been? Cody has no idea and he can’t see his armor anywhere so it’s not like he could slip on his helmet and check the date through the HUD. His thoughts are interrupted by the hissing of the doors opening and Cody looks up to see a medical droid enter the room. 

“Hello, CC-2224, I am B-248, how are you feeling?” 

“Alive,” is the first response that comes to his mind. “How long have I been out? And where are we?” 

“You are onboard the Pegasus, a medical station located in the Naboo system,” the droid says and that explains why the place feels so unfamiliar. “You were put in a bacta tank for twenty four hours and were pulled out two hours ago. You may experience headaches, dizziness and nausea, I recommend you stay in observation for another twenty four hours before you can be released from medical care.” 

Cody nods, because he knows better than to question a medical droid on the subject. 

“I am going to check your vitals,” the droid announces and comes forward. 

It’s quick and efficient, but the droid is careful and it feels better than being prodded by kaminoans, so Cody just goes through with it. 

“You will be making a full recovery. General Kenobi wanted to speak with you as soon as you were awake and feeling good enough for a visit, should I send him in?” the droid asks and Cody frowns. 

_Kenobi_ , the name is familiar. He has to think for a while, but then he remembers General Alten telling the men to defend the base until General Kenobi and Commander Skywalker arrived with reinforcements. Cody suddenly has a flash of bright copper hair and a dancing blue _jetii’kad_. His eyes widen as he realizes that it must actually have happened. The man who dropped from the sky in front of him and led his men to victory must have been Kenobi or Skywalker. And now Kenobi wants to speak to him. Cody pales a bit because the General probably wants to know why his fellow Jedi died on Arantara and what made them so close to losing the battle. He probably wants to find out what went wrong and Cody doesn’t have any idea what to tell him. 

The Jedi are their Generals. What happens to the clones doesn’t matter, they’re only supposed to obey and die for them. Cody may have just realized they aren’t the perfect warriors and leaders he has been taught to believe they are, but that doesn’t mean he can actually blame General Alten for what happened on Arantara. Cody isn’t even sure his plan would have worked better, he just _thinks_ it was a better plan and what he thinks doesn’t matter. 

The 212th will be blamed for this mess and as their Commander, it’s Cody’s responsibility to be punished for their failure. He won’t let any of his men suffer for what happened. If Kenobi deems him defective and has him decommissioned, then so be it. 

“Sure,” he finally says, his voice hoarse. 

“Alright.” 

The droid leaves and Cody grits his teeth. He would like to be able to stand up for this, but he doesn’t think he can actually get on his feet and properly stand at attention. There is no point in getting up if he’s going to collapse in front of the Jedi and make a fool out of himself. So Cody just sits on the bed, his back as straight as possible, his palms flat on his thighs. 

Somehow, this feels worse than slowly agonizing on the battlefield, surrounded by dead bodies and screaming brothers. He should have just died on Arantara and spare them the waste of bacta. 

The doors sigh open and Cody looks up. 

Oh. 

Of course _he_ ’s General Kenobi. The Commander immediately recognizes the copper hair and beard, the shining blue eyes. The Jedi is wearing a dark brown robe, his hands folded inside his sleeves in front of him. Cody can’t help but remember how warm his palm had felt against his cheek, back on Arantara. The thought almost makes him flush in embarrassment, but Cody schools his face in a neutral expression, the one he usually reserves for the Kaminiise. 

“Hello, Commander. It’s good to see you awake,” the Jedi says with a warm smile that does nothing to appease Cody’s nerves. 

“Hello, sir. And-- thank you,” he says, trying not to make it sound like a question. 

“I am Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. Ah, well, I suppose it is General Kenobi now,” he says, scrunching up his nose as he moves forward until he is standing in front of Cody’s bed. “Have you chosen or been given a name you would like to share with me?” 

Cody blinks, taken aback by the question. Names aren’t common amongst the clones. At least, not amongst _common_ clones like Cody. He was CC-2224 for years and _Twenty Four_ was the closest thing to a name his batch brothers gave him, just because it was shorter and more practical to shout during training simulations than his whole designation. Having a proper name wasn’t even on his mind back then, it just seemed normal to be numbers, they all were. At least until the Clone Commanders were split between the one hundred members of the Cuy’val Dar for the two last years of their training. Cody and some of his batchmates had been assigned to Garp Harvin, a Mandalorian originated from Concord Dawn who had mercilessly trained them, but also taught them about their Mandalorian heritage. 

Harvin was the one who gave Cody his name. Impressed by his hand-to-hand fighting skills, the Mandalorian had called him _kotyc_ , something that sounded a lot like _kodeesh_ to the clones who weren’t used to Mando’a back then. It had taken Cody weeks to gather the courage to ask Harvin what it meant, and he still remembers the warm and overwhelming feeling of _pride_ he had felt when the Sergeant told him it meant _strong._

The Kaminoans never complimented them. Why would they compliment their own creations? They were either defective or exactly what the long-necks had made them to be, complimenting them would have been silly. Harvin had been the first one to praise them and Cody hadn’t been the only one overwhelmed by it. His brothers had started using the adjective to call him, butchering the word until it sounded more like _Cody_ and it had stuck. 

General Alten didn’t ask for his name, probably thinking none of them had one. Or maybe it just hadn’t been important to him. But it seems important for Kenobi and Cody isn’t sure how that makes him feel. It reminds him of Harvin’s warm smile after Twenty Five had told him he wanted to be called Davijaan, after a Mandalorian warrior the Sergeant had told them about in one of his many lessons on Mando’ade History. 

“It’s Cody, sir,” he finally responds, a little anxious at the thought of telling his name to someone who isn’t a brother or Sergeant Harvin, but also incredibly _proud_ of being able to do so. 

He doesn’t expect the smile Kenobi gives him in return. It’s genuine, and it looks almost _relieved._

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Commander Cody. Now, I’m sure you would like to put what happened on Arantara behind you, but I need to report what happened to the Jedi Council and I’m missing some precious information. Would you mind telling me what happened?” 

Cody’s throat tightens. “Of course, sir,” he says, grateful to hear that his voice isn’t shaking. He feels like crawling into a hole or lay down and curl into a ball, but he knows he can’t escape this. 

“Our orders were to protect Alpha Base from the Separatists until the arrival of reinforcements. We were expecting an assault on the base, so I had scouts sent out to gather more information on the enemy’s advance and get a proper account of their forces. That’s when we realized our first intel wasn’t… accurate,” Cody recites in a controlled, monotonous voice. “The Separatists had a lot more troops than expected, as well as a dozen of tanks. We weren’t equipped, nor enough to deal with so much droids.” 

Cody abruptly closes his mouth. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. But it _is_ the truth, even General Alten had acknowledged it. 

Kenobi frowns. “Why didn’t you evacuate the base, then?” 

_I told him to,_ Cody wants to say. But he bites his tongue and says: “Our orders were to protect Alpha Base, sir. General Alten insisted we couldn’t just leave it to the Separatists. He knew you and Commander Skywalker would get there soon with the 501st and he wanted us to hold this position until then.” 

The General’s frown deepens and Cody feels like he can’t breathe properly. “I know it was messy, sir, but the men did protect Alpha Base until your arrival. They followed orders,” he quickly says because he can’t help it, he needs to do everything he can to protect his brothers. 

“But I failed to protect General Alten,” he admits, and he’s ashamed to realize that he can’t look at Kenobi in the eye. Instead, he stares at an invisible spot right above the man’s left shoulder and keeps going: “That’s on me, sir. I don’t know how many of my men made it out alive-” he doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want to know how many he lost. “-but please, don’t blame them for General Alten’s death. They’re good men and I’m the one who should be punished for what happened.” 

It’s okay, Cody can do this. He can prove Harvin was right to call him _kotyc_ by shouldering all the blame and saving his brother’s lives. It doesn’t matter that this isn’t how he expected to die, if this is far from the glorious end he thought he would meet on the field of battle. At least he can go knowing he protected his men. 

Kenobi is silent. It makes Cody’s heart beat frantically against his ribcage as it keeps stretching for what feels like ages. Nervous and confused, he finally gathers the courage to look at the man’s face, and what he sees in the Jedi’s bright blue eyes makes his skin crawl. 

Kenobi seems _horrified_ and Cody has no idea why. 

“Sir?” he calls in a small voice and that seems to snap the man out of it. He blinks rapidly, but he still looks sick and Cody watches him unfold his hands and sit at the end of the bed. 

“Commander,” Kenobi speaks in a slow, pained voice. “ _No one_ is getting punished for what happened on Arantara. You and your men aren’t responsible for what happened to Master Alten.” 

Cody can’t do anything but stare blankly at him. He heard the words, he understood them, but… this isn’t what he expected. 

“Master Alten should have evacuated Alpha Base, his decision to hold this position and this war are the reason he died, not you,” he says and Cody can’t help it this time. The mask cracks and he’s not sure what Kenobi sees exactly, but it makes him sigh and look at him with so much sadness in his eyes, Cody feels like he can’t breathe. 

“You told him, didn’t you?” 

“S-sir?” he stutters, his heart beating so fast he feels like it’s going to jump out of his chest. 

“You told him to evacuate, and he didn’t listen to you.” 

Cody gapes at him, his mind reeling. He doesn’t know what to say to that, but then he remembers that Jedi are supposed to be able to read minds and there is no point in lying to him now. 

“I-- I suggested we planted explosives and evacuated the base to lure them inside. We would have lost Alpha Base, but I thought it’d destroy enough droids for us to take the advantage. General Alten decided it would put us at risk of blowing up the base for nothing, so he--” 

“So he decided to trap you all inside and sacrifice hundreds of lives for a piece of concrete,” Kenobi interrupts him coldly and Cody abruptly snaps his mouth shut. 

The General sighs and brings a hand to his face to pinch his nose between his fingers. “I’m sorry, that was inappropriate. I don’t know what Master Alten was thinking, but your plan was definitely better than his, Commander. Actually, this is exactly what I would have done, had I been in your position. You were outnumbered and outmatched, making sure your men were safe while dealing as much damage as possible to the enemy was the smartest course of action.” 

Cody is speechless. He also thought his plan was better than Alten, mostly because it would have spared a lot of his brothers and given them a chance to make this battle a lot more fair. But Cody had been so sure what he thought wouldn’t matter, he can’t believe Kenobi is actually agreeing with him. More than that, the General is saying his fellow Jedi was _wrong._

“I am sorry Master Alten’s mistake cost so many of your men’s lives, Commander,” Kenobi says softly, sadness and regret echoing through his voice. 

“You don’t have to feel sorry, sir, it’s what we were bred for,” he says automatically, because that’s what Cody does when he’s overwhelmed and doesn’t know what to do with all the feelings he’s experiencing. He dutifully recites what’s been drilled into his head, what the Kaminoans expect him to say. He can’t go wrong with it. 

And yet, it seems like he did make a mistake, because Kenobi’s face crumbles for a second, before he catches himself and levels Cody with a firm gaze. 

“I will be taking Master Alten’s place as the 212th General and I would like you to promise me something, Commander.” 

“Anything, sir.” 

“The Senate may have decided to put Jedi in charge of the GAR, but I want us to work and lead those men together. If you ever think that one of my plans is bad, or could do with some improvement, I want you to tell me,” Kenobi says and Cody can only stare and try to process his request. “I want to win this war, Commander, but I don’t want to win at the cost of so many lives. No matter how much I dislike it, you were indeed… trained for this, a lot more than I ever was. Can you promise me you’ll always speak your mind, Commander?” 

That’s not what he’s been taught. He isn’t supposed to tell the Jedi they’re wrong, he is supposed to protect and obey, to defend the Republic against the enemy and follow his General into battle, no matter what. 

But Kenobi is asking him to speak up if he thinks he’s wrong. He’s asking him to tell him if he thinks he’s being a kriffin' _di'kut_ ready to lead his men into a proper slaughter. And Cody isn’t supposed to do that, but he is supposed to obey his Jedi. 

“Yes, sir. I promise you,” he replies, his voice firm. 

Kenobi smiles. “And I promise you I will always listen to what you have to say. And if we don’t agree and the situation allows it, then we will talk about it and compromise until the both of us are satisfied. Does that sound fair to you?” 

It’s a lot more than what Cody ever expected to hear from a Jedi after what happened with Alten. More than he ever expected to hear from _anyone_ , actually. 

“Yes, sir.” 

Kenobi gets up and walks around the bed to stand right next to Cody. With a smile, he extends his hand towards him and the Commander quickly does the same, but Kenobi doesn’t shake his hand. Instead, he clasps his hand firmly around Cody’s bare forearm in a traditional Mandalorian handshake. Cody falters for a second, but he quickly catches himself and closes his own hand around the Jedi’s forearm. 

“Thank you, Cody,” he says before releasing him slowly. “I will let you rest now, you look good for someone who just spent twenty four hours in a bacta tank, but I wouldn’t want you to overexert yourself.” 

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” 

Kenobi gives him one last smile and quietly slips out of the room. 

Cody stares at the closed doors, his mind reeling from the exchange they just had. He keeps replaying Kenobi’s expressions and words in his head until a traitorous thought slips into his mind, making a chill run down his spine. _Maybe General Alten’s death wasn’t such a bad thing after all._

* * *

**MANDO'A**  
vod = brother  
buy'ce = helmet  
kaminiise = kaminoans  
Kad'la = sharp  
ori'vod = older brother  
jetii = Jedi  
jetii'kad = lightsaber  
di'kut = idiot

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you guys enjoyed this, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments (I'm also on tumblr under the same name).


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